Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters.[5] It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers.[6][7] Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.[8]
Type of site
History[edit]
Substack was founded in 2017 by Chris Best, the co-founder of Kik Messenger; Jairaj Sethi, a head of platform and principal developer at Kik Messenger; and Hamish McKenzie, a former PandoDaily tech reporter.[9][10] Best and McKenzie describe Ben Thompson's Stratechery, a subscription-based tech and media newsletter, as a major inspiration for their platform.[5] Best is chief executive as of March 2019.[11]
Content[edit]
Substack users include journalists, subject-matter experts, and media platforms.[12][13][14] Among the high-profile writers to have used the platform are Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and author Glenn Greenwald; Seymour Hersh; culture critic Anne Helen Petersen; music essayist Robert Christgau; and food writer Alison Roman.[15] The New York Times columnist Mike Isaac argued in 2019 that companies like Substack see newsletters as a more stable means to maintain readers through a more direct connection with writers.[11] In 2020, The New Republic said there was an absence of local news newsletters, especially in contrast to the large number of national-level political newsletters.[16] As of late 2020, large numbers of journalists and reporters were coming to the platform, driven in part by the long-term decline in traditional media (there were half as many newsroom jobs in 2019 as in 2004).[17] Around that time, The New Yorker wrote that while "Substack has advertised itself as a friendly home for journalism, [...] few of its newsletters publish original reporting; the majority offer personal writing, opinion pieces, research, and analysis."[18] It described Substack's content moderation policy as "lightweight," with rules against "harassment, threats, spam, pornography, and calls for violence; moderation decisions are made by the founders."[18]
In 2019, Substack added support for podcasts and discussion threads among newsletter subscribers.[19][20]
Major writers on Substack include historian Heather Cox Richardson, tech journalists Casey Newton[21] and Eric Newcomer,[22] journalist Matthew Yglesias,[23] economists Glenn Loury and Emily Oster, linguist John McWhorter, journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss,[24] and authors Daniel M. Lavery, George Saunders, Blake Nelson, Chuck Palahniuk,[25] Marianne Williamson,[26] Salman Rushdie,[27] and Skottie Young.[28]
As of November 2021, the platform said it had more than 500,000 paying subscribers, representing over one million subscriptions.[29] Substack announced in January 2022 that it would begin private Beta testing video on its platform.[29]
In April 2023, Substack implemented a Notes feature, which allows users to publish and repost short-form content. This microblogging feature was compared to Twitter, and many outlets considered it to be a response to changes at Twitter under the ownership of Elon Musk.[30][31] The launch of Substack Notes resulted in criticism by Musk, and Twitter began censoring links to Substack on its platform.[32][33][34]
Privacy incident[edit]
On July 28, 2020, Substack sent out email notifications to all its users about changing privacy policies and notification about California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) compliance. In this notification email, email addresses of all recipients were inadvertently included in the email "cc" field rather than in the "bcc" field. This exposed the email addresses of many Substack users.[42] The company acknowledged the issue on Twitter and said that it was remedied after the initial batch of emails but did not disclose the number of users affected.[42]
Substack Pro[edit]
In March 2021, Substack revealed that it had been experimenting with a revenue sharing program in which it paid advances for writers to create publications on its platform; this became a program known as Substack Pro.[4] Substack has been criticized for not disclosing which writers were part of Substack Pro.[43]
Substack Defender[edit]
Substack provides legal advice to its writers through its program Substack Defender. Lawyers provide a legal review of stories before they are published, and provide advice surrounding cease-and-desist letters related to writers' work.[39] This includes stating that they will defend Jessica Reed Kraus if Amber Heard decided to sue her.[44]